The Valley Mills plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
Chance of showers
Showers likely; cooler
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
3.23 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1901. The next wettest, 2.96 inches, fell in 1907.
Valley Mills’s center stands about 620 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 540 ft to 790 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Norse Hill, about 980 ft, 14 miles west-northwest.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 35×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, marl. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Claystone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Marlstone, limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Marlstone, limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Valley Mills reaches the Gulf of America by way of the North Bosque, the South Bosque and the Brazos: about 440 river miles.
Lake on the way: Waco Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Valley Mills; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Valley Mills has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 97° in July; winter nights fall to about 36° in January. About 36 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Valley Mills normally reaches 69° and falls to 46°. The record high is 91°, in 1989; the record low 21°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.50 in, fell in 1954.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1901 from the Waco Area threaded record (Waco Regional Airport, 15 miles east, 120 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
